Community Chat

[hckynut]

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@Smoky wrote:

Then who makes us happy?  

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@Suziepeach

Maybe me?

=^..^=

hckynut(john)

[LilacTree]

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@HappyDaze wrote:

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@Deanie wrote:

@AngelPuppy1  Well said.  I would like to add to that.  I bellieve this may be a cultural or generational thing.  Not sure, however, I sahare your sentiments. 

I have a neice who married an older man.  Broke up his matrriage at the time. They have no children.  She has a powerhouse of a position.  She just divorced him say 20 years later,  What she said, this will floor some, " I am not going to take care of any old sick man."

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That has nothing to do with culture or generations- that has to do with being selfish and narcissistic. 

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@HappyDaze

I knew someone like that for over 70 years.  We went to school together and were "best friends" even when we lived far from each other at times.

She married a man who owned his own company worth several million.  He was sick with breast cancer but recovered.  They lived together for twelve years, then she divorced him and received a million dollar settlement.  He died six months later which was just a "shrug" to her.  She had accomplished her goal and she was very HAPPY!!  Still is I suppose, we haven't talked in several years.

[HappyDaze]

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@LilacTree wrote:

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@HappyDaze wrote:

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@Deanie wrote:

@AngelPuppy1  Well said.  I would like to add to that.  I bellieve this may be a cultural or generational thing.  Not sure, however, I sahare your sentiments. 

I have a neice who married an older man.  Broke up his matrriage at the time. They have no children.  She has a powerhouse of a position.  She just divorced him say 20 years later,  What she said, this will floor some, " I am not going to take care of any old sick man."

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That has nothing to do with culture or generations- that has to do with being selfish and narcissistic. 

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@HappyDaze

I knew someone like that for over 70 years.  We went to school together and were "best friends" even when we lived far from each other at times.

She married a man who owned his own company worth several million.  He was sick with breast cancer but recovered.  They lived together for twelve years, then she divorced him and received a million dollar settlement.  He died six months later which was just a "shrug" to her.  She had accomplished her goal and she was very HAPPY!!  Still is I suppose, we haven't talked in several years.

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I could never be "friends" with someone like that @LilacTree. I have no tolerance for gold diggers. 

[LilacTree]

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@HappyDaze wrote:

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@LilacTree wrote:

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@HappyDaze wrote:

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@Deanie wrote:

@AngelPuppy1  Well said.  I would like to add to that.  I bellieve this may be a cultural or generational thing.  Not sure, however, I sahare your sentiments. 

I have a neice who married an older man.  Broke up his matrriage at the time. They have no children.  She has a powerhouse of a position.  She just divorced him say 20 years later,  What she said, this will floor some, " I am not going to take care of any old sick man."

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That has nothing to do with culture or generations- that has to do with being selfish and narcissistic. 

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@HappyDaze

I knew someone like that for over 70 years.  We went to school together and were "best friends" even when we lived far from each other at times.

She married a man who owned his own company worth several million.  He was sick with breast cancer but recovered.  They lived together for twelve years, then she divorced him and received a million dollar settlement.  He died six months later which was just a "shrug" to her.  She had accomplished her goal and she was very HAPPY!!  Still is I suppose, we haven't talked in several years.

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I could never be "friends" with someone like that @LilacTree. I have no tolerance for gold diggers. 

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@HappyDaze

You know, HappyDaze, I always knew she had faults, but our long history kept me in.  I knew when she married this man, late in life, and he was morbidly obese and unattractive, and had already been sick, WHY she married him.  We all did.  I even let her live in my house through the divorce . . . and believe it or not, that's when I truly started to be disgusted by her and how far she would go to get what she wanted.  She wanted me to lie for her, but I didn't "pass the test" when the lawyer interviewed me.  He laughed and told me I wasn't believable.  So she flew another friend in (from California) to tell the lies she needed to tell.  She broke that family apart completely because, believe it or not, her son was married to his daughter, and his family does not have anything to do with this girl because she stuck by her husband.  What a choice to have to make!!

Her mother always used to tell me "you don't know the real Joan."  I never felt the same about her again and she finally did something so outrageous and I called her on it, and three weeks later, she "broke up with me" via email and told me never to contact her again . . . which I have not.

I wish my beloved sister, who always said to me "I don't know what you see in her," was alive to see I finally saw the light.

[Suziepeach]

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@hckynut wrote:

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@Smoky wrote:

Then who makes us happy?  

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@Suziepeach

Maybe me?

=^..^=

hckynut(john)

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@hckynut, yep and you do a fine, fine job, even after all these years.....  Hope you & Ms. Cindy are doing better..  

[Tinkrbl44]

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@Deanie wrote:

@AngelPuppy1  Well said.  I would like to add to that.  I bellieve this may be a cultural or generational thing.  Not sure, however, I sahare your sentiments. 

I have a neice who married an older man.  Broke up his matrriage at the time. They have no children.  She has a powerhouse of a position.  She just divorced him say 20 years later,  What she said, this will floor some, " I am not going to take care of any old sick man."

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Ladies .....  have you ever thought about the other side of this?

Years ago when I was single, I tried online dating.   I connected with a rather interesting man who was rather anxious to get married.   It turned out he was a bit older than he represented himself to be, and his primary purpose for getting married was to "lock in" a woman who would be his caregiver when he got sick and was dying.  

I mentioned Long Term Care insurance.  His comment was "Nursing services are just too expensive, but I have to find someone to take care of me.  It would be a lot cheaper to just have my wife do it."

How romantic.   Ugh!

[Plaid Pants2]

A lot of older men are looking for a nurse and/or a purse.

[nana59]

Spent most of my life making everyone happy--most of the time at my own expense--stopped a couple of years ago.....i'm 66--took me too long....

[LilacTree]

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@noodleann wrote:

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@pitdakota wrote:

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@noodleann wrote:

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@pitdakota wrote:

A good friend of mine did marriage counseling for years.  He would always tell us his biggest challenge was trying to get people to understand "you, and you alone are responsible for your happiness".

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I think the corollary for that is that you are also responsible for your own unhappiness. It can take a lot to unravel the roots of unhappiness, whether they're an intrinsic part of your nature, a bad upbringing, or the choice of a partner whose influence is negative--or some combination of all three.

It takes even more work to decide to be happy and learn how to be happy, to make it a habit, and to excise toxic people from your life. But even if you never learn how to be happy, getting rid of the misery makers is vital to having a fighting chance.

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I don't necessarily see it that way, per se.  Long standing psycho-social challenges and situations such as PTSD can certainly be a result of life experienes or a bad upbringing.  I would not see those individuals as choosing to be unhappy or being responsible for not being happy.  They are facing many challenges.  Some have an interruption of the dopamine uptake chemical system in the brain that results in depression or as some people would call it.....being unhappy. 

As he would have married couples in counseling, his goal was to help them to see that they are responsible for their own happiness....it is not the spouse's responsibility to make the other spouse happy.  And if your needs are not met & the marriage is not going to work, make decisions, and move on with the goal of finding happiness in another direction.  

But I don't agree with the exact opposite to say that people are also responsible for their unhappiness in all different types of situations such as might result as being a victim of child abuse or other horrific situations.  

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Well, as someone whose mother scalded her more than once and laughed at my screams, and who bailed out of a physically abusive relationship, I have standing when it comes to the circumstances you cite.

I still say we are responsible for our unhappiness as much as our happiness,  because we're the only ones who can "fix" either. It's up to us to pull up our big girl/boy drawers and get help if we need it so we can get past histories others imposed on us and create more sound realities. Otherwise, we become mired in a h*llish dysphoria, and who wants that?

I'd say regardless of what's happened to you, it's up to you to choose how to deal with it. I'm not going to blame people who give up--it's understandable--but the only real solution is doing the work that only you can do. That starts with taking responsibility for yourself and your realities and deciding to make them better.

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@noodleann

Did you say "scalded" and mean "scolded?"  If it was the former, she should have been arrested, tried, and put in jail for horrific physical abuse.  OMG, if it is the former, my heart goes out to you and I don't know how you survived that!  Did no one know about this?  Did you have siblings?  This really upsets me.

[blackhole99]

Oh my yes, or at least that's what I thought for most of my life. I lived to make my mother happy and of course my husband and our son. Come to find out I did all that for nothing, they viewed my wanting to take care of their needs as my being controlling. Well, that's all I  needed to hear, it's me first now.